Elaborating the Science of Food Choice for Rapidly Changing Food Systems in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

The world’s food systems and environments have been changing dramatically, concomitant with changes in overand undernutrition. We elaborate the science of food choice to better understand, analyze, and respond to relationships between changing food environments and food choice. The science of food choice is concerned with generating knowledge about causal drivers of food choice decision making processes and behavior within immediate food and social environments. Three fundamental and interconnected questions undergird this science; 1) what do people eat from the options available and accessible?; 2) how do people interact with food environments?; and 3) why do people decide to acquire, prepare, distribute, and consume foods as they do? Not all food choice behavior is rational, reflexive, or discrete, but is embedded in wider activities of daily lives. The science of food choice involves understanding influences from multiple systems that drive food choice for deriving sound, actionable policy, and programmatic recommendations

Development of a methods repository for food choice behaviors and drivers at the household and individual levels

This brief identifies important constructs for assessing drivers of food choice behaviors and describes progress on the development of a repository of instruments and measures for assessing these constructs. OBJECTIVES 1. List constructs that can be assessed to understand drivers of household and individual food choice behaviors. 2. Identify instruments and measures to assess each food choice construct and organize these into a searchable repository. 3. Illustrate the use of the Food Choice Repository

Why understanding food choice is crucial to transform food systems for human and planetary health

What, how and why people eat has long been understood to be important for human health, but until recently, has not been recognised as an essential facet of climate change and its effects on planetary health. The global climate change and diet-related health crises occurring are connected to food systems, food environments and consumer food choices. Calls to transform food systems for human and planetary health highlight the importance of understanding individual food choice. Understanding what, how and why people eat the way they do is crucial to successful food systems transformations that achieve both human and planetary health goals. Little is known about how food choice relates to climate. To clarify potential paths for action, we propose that individual food choice relates to climate change through three key mechanisms. First, the sum of individual food choices influences the supply and demand of foods produced and sold in the marketplace. Second, individual food decisions affect type and quantity of food waste at the retail and household level. Third, individual food choices serve as a symbolic expression of concern for human and planetary health, which can individually and collectively stimulate social movements and behaviour change. To meet the dietary needs of the 2050 global population projection of 10 billion, food systems must transform. Understanding what, how and why people eat the way they do, as well as the mechanisms by which these choices affect climate change, is essential for designing actions conducive to the protection of both human and planetary health